Primary petrochemical operations

The terms cracking and reforming are often used without qualification to describe a variety of refinery and primary petrochemical operations. It is hoped... 

Processes for the liquid-phase oxidation of hydrocarbons were conceived to by-pass the cracker. Until the early 1970s, fixed costs dominated primary petrochemical operations, and represented a significant part of the price increment in each successive chemical conversion acetic acid was well down the line. With very low feedstock prices, selectivity was of lesser concern, n-Butane was selected as a preferred feedstock by Celanese and Union Carbide... 

The first group comprise the natural gas liquids (NGLs), ethane, propane and butanes. The latter two are often referred to as a LPG and are often sold as a mixture. These feedstocks are of major interest as primary feedstock for petrochemical operations for cracking into ethylene and propylene. Liquids produced from natural gas processing are often referred to as condensate or natural gasoline. Such liquids are used in both petrochemical and reefing operations and their use as a feedstock is discussed in the next chapter. 

The use of coal as an alternative raw material for some plastics materials is easier to see than that of agricultural (renewable) resources. Thus, polymers and copolymers of formaldehyde are well established commercial products. The primary raw material for these polymers, methanol, can be made from coal just as readily as from natural gas or oil. Certainly, in the case of a new plant for making methanol, the cost and availability of natural gas or petrolexun relative to coal must be weighed carefully. Even an operating plant might be converted from natural gas to coal as raw material much more easily than perhaps any other petrochemical operation. 

Tliere are a host of reasons why aeeidents oeeur in industry. The primary eauses are meehanieal failure operational error (human error), process upset, and design error. Figure 16.1.1 provides the relative number of accidents that have occurred in tlie petrochemical field. ... 

This chapter considers the production and price of Uquid feedstock of interest to the petrochemicals industry. This mainly concerns naphtha, gas oils and residual fuel oils for both feedstock and energy. These feedstocks are produced by the primary operations in oil-refining. As a consequence many petrochemical complexes are juxtaposed to refineries. For other operations there is a large trade in the required materials and the feedstock can be purchased on the open market. 

Instead of commercializing new products on the basis of these formidable technical capabilities, Mobil chose in 1974 to become a conglomerate through unrelated diversification with the purchase of two major U.S. companies, Montgomery Ward, for decades Sears Roebuck s primary rival, and the Container Corporation of America. Inevitably the strategy failed, and Mobil sold off the first in 1986 and the second two years later. In 1989, 7 percent of its operating income came from petrochemicals. By 1992 it was... 

---